Newsom Archives — Page 28 of 85 — San Francisco Bay Guardian Archive 1966

Workers rally against Newsom’s layoff scheme

Sasha Cuttler

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March 26, 2010

By Jobert Poblete

Dozens of workers at San Francisco General Hospital rallied March 25 to protest layoffs there and throughout the city as ordered by Mayor Gavin Newsom. More than 17,000 city workers received layoff notices in the last few weeks, including hundreds at the hospital. The protest was organized by SEIU Local 1021, which represents around 12,000 city employees, 9,000 of whom have received pink slips.

Many of these workers are expected to be re-hired as part-time employees, working 37.5 hours a week or less. The move is expected to shave $50 million from a more than $500 million budget deficit. The Mayor’s Office is calling this a “reorganization” that will minimize the impact on services and maintain employment. But the plan, which was proposed by Newsom last month without first consulting with the city’s unions, has met fierce resistance from employees and their labor representatives and is now the subject of negotiations between the mayor and 41 city employee unions.

SEIU acknowledged the city’s fiscal troubles but is upset about what it calls a unilateral change in its members’ wages and benefits. “Essentially what they’re doing is unilaterally cutting wages and benefits without negotiating it,” SEIU organizer Gabriel Haaland told us. “It’s not a question of whether we’re willing to sacrifice, but that choice has been taken away.”

Hospital workers, carrying signs that read “Patient Care is Not Part Time,” also raised concerns about the layoff-rehire scheme’s potential effects on the quality of services at the hospital. “It can’t work in the emergency room and it can’t work in the rest of the hospital,” said Ed Kinchley, a social worker who works in the hospital’s emergency room.

Shari Zinn, an X-ray technician in the hospital, said her department already runs below minimum staffing levels, forcing patients to wait two to four hours for X-rays. Since X-ray technicians are hard to retain, she is not being laid off, but clerks and aids in her department are. “If there isn’t a clerk or aid,” Zinn said, “then an X-ray tech has to stop what they’re doing. Fewer patients can be served.”

Hospital officials would not comment on the layoffs.

At the rally, speakers called on the city to come up with revenue measures and other ways to balance the budget. “The city has really pushed us too far,” Sin Yee Poon, SEIU’s chief elected officer, told the assembled workers. “They’re balancing they’re budget on us, just us.”

Can Newsom save SF parties?

Sasha Cuttler

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March 24, 2010

11

Why won’t Mayor Gavin Newsom save San Francisco’s nightlife and culture? That question was raised toward the end of this week’s cover story on party-crashing cops, but it’s worth highlighting here because Newsom seem uniquely suited to the task of mediating this damaging dispute.

Newsom owned a restaurant and bar before being elected mayor with the strong support of the San Francisco Police Officers Association. The business community is one of his key constituencies, and he constantly talking about the need to promote tourism, which relies on our cultural vitality. He’s the most natural, logical bridge for this divide.

That’s why attorney Mark Webb, who represents several clubs and individuals who have been harassed by SFPD Officer Larry Bertrand, has explicitly been calling for Newsom to get involved.

“I really believe his involvement could help us get to a place of calm,” Webb said. “We have to stop this petty infighting and we have to embrace the cause, which is to make San Francisco’s nightlife an inviting environment.”

DNA Lounge, which is not part of Webb’s lawsuit but has been fighting against harassment by Bertrand and the ABC, also wants to see Newsom broker some peace talks.

“Absolutely, Gavin certainly has the juice to deal with this problem and we would welcome his involvement,” DNA general manager Barry Synoground told us. “We don’t know why there is such vehemence against nightlife and entertainment…What kills me is we have a large group of responsible purveyors, but we’re not being treated as such. We’re being treated like criminals.”

But Newsom has resisted the call, with his press secretary Tony Winnicker telling us, “I wouldn’t rule it out, but the mayor has department heads for that reason,” saying he preferred for Police Chief George Gascon to tell with it. But the problem is this isn’t a police issue, it’s a political one.

DNA Lounge (which has reguarly blogged the crackdown) has highlighted how SFPD Commander James Dudley sees nightlife in the city: as a nuisance to be abated, rather than an important culture to be embraced and celebrated. Winnicker claims that Newsom understands this: “The mayor understands the importance of a vibrant nightlife.”

But that understanding hasn’t translated into official city policy. Attorney Mark Rennie, who handles permitting and compliance issues for about 40 nightlife and culture clients, said that San Francisco has become notorious for making life difficult for club owners and other purveyors of fun.

“The city has always had this love-hate relationship with nightclubs. But it’s really bad now,” Rennie said, noting how welcoming other local cities are toward nightclubs, which are important economic drivers. “Berkeley gets it. Oakland gets it. I don’t know why San Francisco doesn’t get it.”

Which is strange because, of all people, Newsom should get it. He should understand the natural tension between certain elements of both the police and nightlife communities and, valuing them both, try to find a way to solve this problem. So whatdaya say, Gavin? After you’re done try to clean up the mess you created with the labor unions, how about stepping in to address a problem that is closer to your sweet spot?

Image by Luke Thomas/Fog City Journal

Hank Plante’s exit interview

Sasha Cuttler

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March 24, 2010

2

Hank Plante ends a three-decade run as a political journalist with tonight’s (March 24) broadcast of the CBS 5 Eyewitness News, where he has worked since 1986 after starting his career with newspapers in Washington DC. So we took the occasion to talk politics with him, learning that his loyalties lie downtown.

Plante agreed that politics has become ugly these days. “It’s just so much more acrimonious, that’s one thing that’s changed. The other is just the money that’s involved,” Plante told us, marveling at Meg Whitman’s plans to spend $40 million of her own money to run for governor and the $1 million per day that corporations spent lobbying against the health reform bill signed by President Obama.

But the changes haven’t gotten Plante down, as they have many political junkies, who decry the crippling of government’s ability to combat corporate power and address real social and economic problems. “I’ve never become a cynic, and I think that’s one thing that sets me apart from many political journalists,” he said, adding, “I still think politicians can make a difference.”

Yet like many political journalists, when I ask who his favorite politicians have been, he rates them based on whether they’ve made good stories, not whether they good for the people. For journalists, bad is often good, whether it be natural disasters or disgraceful politicians.

“Arnold is a great story. Willie Brown was a great story. Gray Davis was a dull story until he got recalled, then he was a good story,” Plante said.

What about Mayor Gavin Newsom, who has often given Plante exclusive access (including Newsom’s first extended interview after his 2007 sex scandal), but who has also angrily walked out in the middle of an interview with Plante.

“Personally, I like the mayor. But I have to ask him tough questions, so he can be mercurial. Right now, he’s running for office again, so he’s charming,” Plante said.

In fact, for a journalist, Plante makes clear his preference for Newsom over the progressive majority on the Board of Supervisors, joking, “If I had a month to live, I’d spend it with the Board of Supervisors because it would seem like five years.”

Plante also said that he opposes district elections — which he said have prevented the emergence of big-stature political figures like Dianne Feinstein and Quintin Kopp — and Plante said he doesn’t see the value of district elections in counteracting the political power of downtown corporations. “I’m a capitalist and I have no problem with people making money,” he said.

Yet Plante acknowledges the divide between downtown and progressives is San Francisco’s dominant political dynamic, noting, “You see how afraid downtown is of the Board of Supervisors appointing the new mayor.”

While Plante said he believes in the importance of politics, he does decry how political science and public relations have been manipulated in recent years.

“They’re taken a page out of the Karl Rove playbook to talk over the journalists right at the public,” Plante said, noting how many politicians no longer feel the need to be accessible to journalists or honestly and directly answer their questions. “They really want to control the message, so the accessibility is diminished.”

Nonetheless, Plante said he regularly emphasizes the importance of political engagement: “In a place like the Bay Area, where people are inundated with lots of information sources, you have to keep saying it over and over again.”

Plante, 63, is retiring and moving to his home in Palm Springs with his partner, Roger. Among the many awards and accolades he earned during his career are several Emmys and a prestigious Peabody Award. His station sent out a press release praising Plante, including this comment by anchor Dana King: “There is an entire population of politicians breathing a sigh of relief at the news of Hank’s retirement. Hank was the consummate professional, never combative but he did his homework and asked tough, pointed questions. Politicians, love him or hate him, respected and answered them, every single time. Our newsroom will suffer a huge intellectual void when he leaves.”

Street view

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 23, 2010

37

By Skyler Swezy

news@sfbg.com

The Haight-Ashbury is out-of-control, according to some recent news reports and testimony by cops and other backers of the proposed sit-lie ordinance. They report street toughs brazenly smoking crack, blocking sidewalks, spitting on babies, and intimidating citizens with pit bulls.

As this story goes, dangerous thugs have replaced harmless beggars. They’ve gone from annoying to menacing, a change police say they’re helpless to address without legislation banning sitting or lying on sidewalks, which Mayor Gavin Newsom and Police Chief George Gascón introduced March 1.

Proponents and opponents have attended City Hall meetings and voiced their arguments in the media. The police, homeless rights advocates, Haight Street business owners, residents, Newsom, and columnists have spoken their piece. But what do the street kids, who haven’t been heard from in this debate, have to say for themselves?

So on March 19, I spent the day walking the Haight to get the perspective from the street, asking kids what they think is going on?

It’s 3 p.m. and I’m standing on the southwest corner of Central and Haight streets next to a Bob Marley mural painted on the side of a liquor store. A cop car cruises by. With no thugs or panhandlers in sight, I head toward Golden Gate Park along the south side of the street.

On the corner of Masonic and Haight, there are some well-kept teens perched against the wall of X-Generation. Clutching shopping bags, they are not panhandlers, but they sit on the ground because Haight Street doesn’t have benches, except for one on Stanyan facing the park.

These kids clearly aren’t the targets of this ordinance, so I move on to the notorious Haight-Asbury intersection, which is also devoid of vagabonds. An old woman and young boy, both well-dressed, squat in front of Haight Asbury Vintage, watching shoppers pass by.

Almost at the end of the block, outside a closed storefront, a scruffy young man is perched on a back pack holding a battered piece of cardboard that reads “SMILES/HAVE A NICE DAY!? OR NIGHT.”

“You have a beautiful smile,” he croons to passersby. Most stare straight ahead, some smile without making eye contact; a woman in her 30s asks to take his picture. Jay is 18, has a scarce beard and crust in the corners of his sleepy pale blue eyes. He is from Ohio and says he has been bumming on Haight and sleeping in the park for about three months. He hitchhiked to San Francisco because his sister is “a back-stabbing crack head, so I left.”

He doesn’t think panhandling has become more aggressive recently, but that business owners “just want to be asses.” He’s not much of a talker and more interested in smiles, so I leave Jay to his work.

On the next block I meet Kevin Geoppo, 31, cupping a handful of coinage, sitting on the window ledge of a storefront under renovation. Kevin says he’s a heroin addict who grew up in Orlando, Fla., and made his way to San Francisco years ago. He’s obtained an SRO and primary care doctor, but can’t get a job.

He sees both sides of the sit/lie law debate. “Those who sit and lie do cause a lot trouble, stir up energy that isn’t needed to [hurt] tourism, and [threaten] violence, so I can understand why this is being talked about,” he says.

At the same time, he is wary of how the police would use the law and at whom it would be directed. He doesn’t think things are getting worse, but he says the panhandling and menacing attitudes of some kids ebb and flow as different groups pass through the city.

“A lot of these yuppie, rich, bureaucrat people are trying to clean up everything because if you take a left or a right anywhere off Haight Street, it’s rich people living in those houses,” he says. I let him get back to business and proceed down the street.

I decide to drop into Aub Zam Zam cocktail lounge for a veteran bartender’s opinion. Owner Bob Harpe is behind the horseshoe bar, slicing limes and chatting with long-time Haight resident Paul Zmudzinski.

Harpe doesn’t have problems with aggressive or congregating street kids. “If you ask them to move and treat them with a general level of respect, they go on their way.”

He believes the rising number of homeowners in the neighborhood and businesses catering to a more affluent clientele are behind the recent uproar. “The rents on Haight Street have escalated dramatically, so boutique owners have to pump up their prices. Then you get more affluent shoppers who are turned off by the skuzzy-looking street kids coming through,” Harpe says. “The whole thing is kind of disgusting.”

Back outside, I head to the next block and come across Kasper who is “flying a sign” that reads “SEX!!! NOW THAT I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION, SPARE ANY $$$?”

He is a 33-year-old traveler who just landed back on Haight, having spent the last three weeks in Berkeley. He’s headed north to a 420 Rainbow gathering and then to Idaho for work. With combat boots, Army pants, and a neck tattoo, he’s a tough-looking guy with a soft-spoken voice.

“They don’t understand all the money they’ll lose. We panhandle money in the street and then spend it in the stores here,” Kasper says. “Those liquor stores rely on street people.”

He says many tourists come to the Haight to see people playing guitars, banging drums, and selling their hemp trinkets. And when it comes to instances of violence or aggressiveness, those are limited to a few of the community and could happen anywhere, regardless of a sit-lie law.

“These things are heavy,” he says nodding to his backpack. “To have to stand, hold your straps, and fly a sign to get something to eat is just ridiculous.”

McDonalds is the last establishment before Golden Gate Park, which serves as a three-mile squatter haven stretching to the Pacific Ocean. Beneath the golden arches, three guys are singing an improvised McDonalds song, but two busted guitar strings kills their burger ballad hustle.

The three agree to an interview and form a semicircle on the sidewalk. Stoney, 19, the guitar player, is wearing sunglasses, a backwards cap, and is heavily scarred on his arms and neck. “Are you against weed?” he asks, before hitting a pipe carved from a deer antler.

Angelo, 23, is a self-dubbed vagabond originally from Virginia. He just got out of jail for selling weed to a cop in the Tenderloin. Nick, 18, wears a mighty Afro and says almost nothing.

Two bike cops zip up and tell us to move it. “You’re blocking the sidewalk,” one cop says. Everyone stands up. “It’s not illegal yet, dude!” Stoney yells back toward the cops as we cross Stanyan to enter the park.

Stoney and Angelo agree with each other that lawmakers are focusing on the bad actions of a few to push all street kids off Haight. “We have the right to use the sidewalk just like anyone else,” Angelo says. “It’s crazy, man. We’re all just fuckin’ a bunch of cells put together, floating around a ball of fire in space.”

The sit-lie ordinance could be considered by the Board of Supervisors next month. For details on a March 27 citywide protest of the measure, visit www.standagainstsitlie.org.

Shit show

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 23, 2010

5

By Brady Welch

news@sfbg.com

GREEN CITY Food safety groups complain that the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission has until recently been dumping its crap in the backyards and gardens of any residents who unwittingly asked for it.

The city calls this crap “biosolids compost,” and for Mayor Gavin Newsom and the SFPUC, it seemed like a green dream come true. But it turns out that putting processed human excrement into people’s vegetable gardens might not be the elegant — if somewhat gross — reuse strategy it once seemed to be.

The vexing sewage sludge left over after treatment and separation of the city’s wastewater was being treated, combined with woodchips and paper waste, and labeled compost so it could, according to the SFPUC’s Web site, “provide essential plant nutrients, improve soil structure, enhance moisture retention, and reduce soil erosion.” Not bad for the ultimate human waste product.

The problem, say groups including the Center for Food Safety and Organic Consumers Association, is that the SFPUC’s compost contains a host of other toxins and hazardous materials not necessarily originating with what the city’s granola-munching denizens flush down the toilet. In fact, a January 2009 Environmental Protection Agency study of sewage sludge from 74 treatment plants found, in nearly every sample, “28 metals, four polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, two semi-volatiles, 11 flame retardants, 72 pharmaceuticals, and 25 steroids and hormones.” Yikes.

“You name it, it’s in there,” John Mayer, said spokesperson for the Organic Consumers Association. The compost “is hazardous waste, and it’s absurd to claim that it’s safe to consume. No matter what the sludge processing industry claims, it is by definition dangerous.” The EPA report would certainly seem to support Mayer’s claim, except that it expressly stops short of doing just that, stating that the results “do not imply that the concentrations for any [substance] are of particular concern to EPA.”

Then again, it was the EPA that started promoting the use of biosolid compost in the first place, back in 1978. The only safety thresholds the agency sets for biosolids compost concern nine heavy metals and the elimination of pathogens — none of the flame retardants, steroids, semi-volatiles, and carcinogens found in their study — a standard that has remained largely unchanged for a decade.

But that’s only part of the story, because as it turns out, San Francisco’s sewage sludge isn’t that contaminated compared to the shit generated in other regions. “We found in our tests that it’s really low for all the emerging pollutants,” SFPUC spokesperson Tyron Jue told us, citing data listed on its Web site indicating that testing goes beyond what the EPA requires, and even beyond more stringent European Union standards. Jue even said that the SFPUC’s biosolids compost has “metal limits lower than in a daily vitamin, and lower or comparable to store-bought compost.”

Yet Paige Tomaselli of the Center for Food Safety understands the data differently. “San Francisco may test above and beyond the national standards. They may think their testing is green. But the truth of the matter is that that the compost they’re giving away is not generated here in San Francisco.”

Indeed, the sewage sludge the SFPUC tested is not the same stuff it was handing out for three years as “organic biosolids compost.” After the organic food industry complained, the utility recently dropped the “organic” designation, offering the admittedly sheepish defense that the label was meant to imply “carbon-rich,” a definition that would make, among nearly everything else, the Guardian you hold in your hands organic.

Jue told us that the utility spends over $3 million annually on its biosolids program, $500,000 of which last year went to contracts with Synagro, “the largest recycler of organic residuals in the United States,” according to its Web site. The compost in the SFPUC’s giveaways came from the corporation’s Central Valley Composting Facility in Merced County, where it was mixed with sludge from at least eight other counties, including municipalities whose safety requirements are nowhere near as stringent as San Francisco’s.

“The vast majority [of sludge] comes from Fresno,” Tomaselli said, adding that the SFPUC continues to cite its own numbers, “completely ignoring the fact that this sewage sludge comes from a city with agricultural and industrial toxins that may be going into the waste stream.”

Many of those toxins remain in the “compost” San Franciscans have been applying to their tomato plants. “You can cook it all day,” Mayer told us. “Those things aren’t going anywhere.”

Both OCA and CFS say that, given such a broad avenue by which toxic material could enter the SFPUC’s compost, the SFPUC is violating San Francisco’s environmental standards. For example, the opening chapter of the Environment Code for the City and County of San Francisco explicitly states that all members of the city’s government should employ the “precautionary principle” in conducting its affairs, requiring the city to err on the side of caution in environmental policy.

One sentence in particular would seem to address biosolids and the 2009 EPA study specifically: “Any gaps in scientific data uncovered by the examination of alternatives will provide a guidepost for future research, but will not prevent the city from taking protective action.” And in the case of so-called biosolids, protective action would seem to call for keeping this shit away from food.

Hugh Kaufman, a senior policy analyst at the EPA and founder of the Superfund program, flatly stated to us over the phone that “there’s no scientific consensus that this stuff is safe. They test less than 1 percent of the stuff that has been tested to be in it.”

The health effects of even that 1 percent can be alarming. Of the nine heavy metals the EPA tests for, chromium is a known carcinogen and mercury can cause permanent nervous system and kidney damage. But if that stuff doesn’t kill you, prolonged exposure to low levels of arsenic, another heavy metal, “can cause a discoloration of the skin and the appearance of small corns or warts,” according to the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration Web site.

Considering that Kaufman works in the Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response (as apposed to the Office of Water that oversees biosolids), we asked him how and why his own employer is encouraging the land application of something so potentially hazardous.

“I think it’s very similar to the reason why the government doesn’t ban naked credit-default swaps. You’ve got a situation here where the cheapest way to dispose of the sludge is land application,” he said. By giving away the sludge as compost, as San Francisco has been doing, “you can transfer liability from the government to the public where the stuff is ultimately dumped. There is tremendous economic pressure to keep the ball rolling in the same direction.”

A February 2008 ruling of 11th Circuit Court of Appeals would seem to bear this out. The case involved the McElmurrays, a family of farmers that allowed the city of Augusta, Ga., to apply biosolids on their land from 1979 to 1990. The sludge eventually poisoned their crops and even the cows who fed on them.

Citing Augusta’s lack of disclosure about the noxious effects of the sludge, the McElmurrays sought compensation subsidies under a 2002 Farm Bill, going first to the county, then the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency, a state-level agency. After a number of back-and-forth denials and delays, the matter was appealed to the national USDA, which then sought the EPA’s advice for their ruling.

The court found that the series of opinions the EPA subsequently issued were unrelated to the case before the USDA and were nevertheless based on Augusta’s faulty land application data. “In short,” the ruling’s conclusion states, “it appears that the only persons to consider [the McElmurrays’] applications ended up ruling in their favor…. The USDA’s decision to accept a contrary decision, based on no review of the applications by the EPA, was arbitrary and capricious. The conclusions of the EPA were not based on substantial evidence.”

As for SFPUC’s biosolids giveaway, “They wanted a program that would green-wash this dangerous substance,” Mayer told us. “And they participated in this ruse for the benefit of Synagro. Even the mayor got pulled in.”

Tony Winnicker, the spokesperson for the SFPUC before becoming Newsom’s press secretary in January, told us the idea behind the program was a good one. “The spirit behind this is right, in terms of reuse and sustainability,” he said. “This was one of the PUC’s environmental initiatives from the beginning, and the mayor supports the agency’s efforts at environmental sustainability.”

But Winnicker said he was not aware that San Francisco’s well-tested biosolids were being mixed with those of other areas, and that Newsom would defer to SFPUC experts on how to handle the situation.

“I have no doubt that they tell people it’s biosolids compost,” CFS’s Paige Tomaselli told us. But she echoed the 11th Circuit court’s findings when she added, “On the other hand, I don’t think people know what that entails.”

This could be why SFPUC recently suspended the compost giveaways. “We’re reevaluating,” Jue told us. “What we’re trying to do is take a step back. We’re always looking at all the new information presented in front of us.” As for the utility’s record of disclosure, “We’ve always been very transparent with everyone coming to pick up compost. This is bringing awareness to an issue people don’t want to think about. [Sewage] doesn’t disappear. We have to think about it.”

So what’s to be done? Newsom has pushed San Francisco to the national forefront in sustainability and generating zero waste. Unfortunately, “they’re part of the wrong side of the sludge game,” said EPA’s Kaufman. “Is it possible to manage it better? Yes. Is there a black box to spin gold out of hay? No. Can one be invented in the future? Maybe.”

Kaufman found quite a bit of potential in the city’s successful green-bin composting. “San Francisco collects biodegradable waste material, good waste material, that can make very good compost,” he noted. “It’s not made from industrial waste; it’s made from real organic material. That’s not what the giveaway compost is made from. If San Francisco had taken what homeowners had put in for recycling and composted that and given that away, that would be fantastic.”

It would certainly have been better than the shit it has been giving away.

The new War on Fun

Jesse Hawthorne Ficks

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March 23, 2010

46

news@sfbg.com

For several years, the Guardian has been running regular stories chronicling what we’ve dubbed the Death of Fun, a trend of official crackdowns and shakedowns on people who throw parties and festivals in San Francisco. In the last year, that trend has started to morph into an often brutal War on Fun, with a growing list of atrocities and casualties associated with this overzealous new approach to killing the city’s entertainment industry.

Why this is happening is baffling to those most affected: nightclub owners and workers, party promoters, DJs and VJs, fundraising activists, and people just out to have a good time without being harassed by a cop. But in recent months, we’ve learned much more about what’s happening and who the main perpetrators are.

Two undercover enforcers have been at the center of just about every recent case of nightclubs or private parties being raided without warrants and aggressively shut down, their patrons roughed up (see “Fun under siege,” 4/21/09) and their money, booze, and equipment punitively seized “as evidence” (see “Police seize DJs laptops,” 11/24/09) even though few of these raids result in charges being filed in court.

Officer Larry Bertrand of the San Francisco Police Department’s Southern Station and Michelle Ott, an agent with the California Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, are plainclothes partners who spend their weekends undercover, crashing parties, harassing disfavored nightclubs, brutalizing party-goers, and trying to send the unmistakable message that they’re in charge of San Francisco nightlife. Neither responded to our interview requests.

Isolated incidents of intolerant cops and NIMBY citizens who repeatedly complain about certain clubs or festivals has been a problem for years (see “Death of fun,” 5/24/06 and “Death of fun, the sequel,” 4/24/07). Top city officials have opted to cancel events such as Halloween in the Castro District rather than try to manage them better, and the nightlife community has tried to organize in defense of its interests (see “Fighting for the right to party,” 7/1/08) with mixed results.

But the personal War of Fun by Bertrand and Ott seems to have galvanized and united the nightlife and festival community like never before, leading to the creation of a new California Music and Culture Association and prompting threats of a federal lawsuit alleging the ABC-SFPD collaboration is a racketeering scheme designed to harass, disrupt, and extort people engaged in otherwise lawful activity.

The myriad horror stories associated with Bertrand and Ott have also finally begun to draw attention from the Mayor’s Office, which has quietly pushed the SFPD to rein in Bertrand and change its policies on raiding parties and seizing property. State Sen. Mark Leno also has gotten involved, brokering a March 12 meeting between club owners and Steve Hardy, director of ABC (which, in addition to cracking down on nightclubs — see “Busting bars,” 6/23/09 — has recently announced a campaign against fruit-infused liquor).

“They were going to see how they could unwind this a bit,” Leno told us, adding that he was “infuriated” by stories of abusive treatment of the public. “The fear that it spreads through the community is unacceptable.”

The question now is what Hardy, Mayor Gavin Newsom, and Police Chief George Gascón — who has ordered some crackdowns and wants greater authority to discipline problem officers — is going to do about it.

CHAOS AT A STUDENT PARTY

It was after midnight on Jan. 31 when Krystal Peak, a journalist with San Francisco State University’s Golden Gate Xpress, received a call from her managing editor. There was a commotion and a swarm of police cars outside a student party at Seventh and Minna streets near her home, and she was asked to investigate.

She came upon the aftermath of a melee between police and partygoers that had taken place after a fundraising event at a SoMa warehouse art space was upended. The benefit was organized to raise legal funds for students who staged a building occupation at the University of California at Berkeley, in defiance of budget cuts.

The event was clearly chaotic, and it’s hard to sort out exactly what happened and when. City officials say the partiers were throwing bottles and firecrackers at the police; people at the event say the cops started it all.

But the tales partygoers tell about the behavior of Bertrand and Ott, the undercover enforcers, are similar to a series of other stories involving the pair, stories published in the Guardian and elsewhere.

There had been multiple arrests by the time Peak arrived on the scene. Numerous witnesses asserted that things were going along without incident until a fire marshal arrived in response to a complaint, and in short order, two officers who’d been there in plainclothes for hours — Bertrand and Ott — began shouting, tackling people, and kicking in doors.

Police Chief George Gascón acknowledged that the department has been targeting underground parties. “We get a lot of resident complaints about it,” he said in a recent Guardian interview. “We’re talking about a lot of the underground parties, or the parties where the promoters are exceeding their authorities to a number of people.”

Several hundred attended this particular party. Of the 11 people arrested, eight were either detained or cited and released. None faced underage drinking or drug charges. At least five were charged with resisting arrest. One individual was charged with vandalism, two were charged with battery on an officer, and two detained for being drunk in public.

Peak began photographing the scene: busted-up chairs, uniformed officers guarding the entrance, police cars everywhere. She zoomed her lens to capture the wreckage inside. None of the uniformed officers seemed to have a problem with her — but when she spotted the undercover officers with exposed badges, that changed.

The cops broke through the door, yelling. “They said, ‘This is an investigation, you’re not allowed to be here.'<0x2009> she said. “We told them we were with the press.” They threatened to arrest her.

Shortly after, the plainclothes officers crossed in front of her to an unmarked car. She took another picture. Bertrand, a tall guy with a shaved head, allegedly turned and grabbed her arm, and both officers shouted at her. “[Ott] said to me, ‘Your flash has impeded my investigation,'” Peak recounted. She was cuffed and arrested on the spot, and her camera was confiscated.

She was cited for obstruction of justice, but the charges were dropped. And she got her camera back — but says the SD memory card, where all the photos were stored — was missing.

“I flipped [the camera] open … and found the SD card was missing,” she said. She asked Bertrand where it was. “He said, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,'” Peak recalled. Bertrand, she recalled, then looked around at a group of officers watching the exchange, and announced, “This woman is refusing to leave. I’m going to have to re-arrest her.” Ott appeared, according to Peak, and insisted that there was no evidence the memory card had been in the camera in the first place.

“My camera will not ignite a flash unless there’s a memory card in there,” Peak explained. In the end, she left empty-handed — without photos of the undercover officers.

BUSTING DOORS

Earlier, when the party was in full swing, a 24-year-old California State University, Fullerton student visiting from Los Angeles says when the fire marshal entered, Bertrand flashed his badge, yelling at everybody to get out. “It was really aggressive from the get-go,” said the Fullerton student, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he had a pending legal case. “It’s very hard for me to describe the intensity to which this guy was busting down doors.”

Later, the young man from L.A. said, he was following people who left in a rush, and ran to catch up. “Shortly after, I felt a blow to the back right of my head,” he said. “My glasses flew off, and I was tackled to the ground. My forehead was being pushed straight into the ground and they were holding my hair. I kept repeating … please, I can’t see — I’m legally blind. I thought three or four officers were on top of me, and they were saying, ‘Fuck you, you little anarchist punk.'<0x2009>”

That’s when he said he felt a sensation like “a bunch of really intense bee stings on my left side, just above my hipbone.” He thought he was Tasered — and photos he showed us depict a skin burn. SFPD officers are not authorized to carry Tasers.

“It sounds like a stun gun, not a Taser gun,” Ken Cooper, a firearms and Taser instructor based in New York, noted when the incident was described to him.

When we shared the photos with SFPD’s media relations department, Lt. Lyn Tomioka noted, “I can tell you that we do not have any tool that would produce the type of wounds shown in the picture that you attached, or produce a stinging sensation.”

The L.A. visitor said he was delivered this explanation from an officer while in the holding cell: “One of your anarchist buddies must’ve had a Taser, ran over to you trying to get one of our officers, got you instead, and ran away.”

Cooper Brislain, a Web developer from Santa Cruz, told us his iMac was destroyed that night. A friend of the owners of the art space, he was there doing video mixing for the party, he explained. After the trouble started, he began carrying his computer and mixing equipment toward the door. “The uniformed officers were going to let me go. I told them, ‘I just came here to perform.’ They seemed OK,” he said. Then he encountered Bertrand.

“He … grabbed me by the collar, led me over toward the wall, and sat me down,” Brislain told us. He says Bertrand and Ott seized his computer. Brislain says no charges were filed against him.

The morning after, he found that his computer had been smashed up. His friends found it in pieces at the bottom of the stairs. To this day, he says he has not been able to retrieve his ID, which was seized that night. “I tried calling [Bertrand] on his extension to leave a message and never heard back,” he says. “They told me he probably wouldn’t return voicemails.” The District Attorney’s Office has a different perspective. D.A. spokesperson Brian Buckelew said the partygoers were drunk and “going nuts on police.” People were throwing firecrackers, he said. “It obviously got out of hand, and people were throwing bottles at police,” he said.

The student from L.A. allegedly shoved a female officer, Buckelew said. According to the report, he said, police officers were taking someone into custody, and he tried to pull them free.

Nevertheless, even Chief Gascón agrees that it’s not okay to destroy someone’s personal property. “If in fact the allegations were proven to be the case that an officer took somebody’s laptop and threw it down the stairs,” Gascón told us, “that would be inappropriate, and that officer would be sanctioned accordingly.” He noted that he met with an attorney from the Electronic Frontier Foundation about a recurring trend of officers — Bertrand in particular — seizing DJ laptops at underground parties. “We’ve met with them and we’ve agreed to actually tighten up the protocols in how this would be handled,” Gascón noted.

A RICO SUIT

The list of local nightclub clubs that have been recently targeted by Bertrand and Ott or subjected to ABC sanctions is long. It includes Great American Music Hall, Slim’s, DNA Lounge, Mist, Whisper, the Room, Vessel, Azul, Butter, and Club Caliente (which closed down after its mostly Latino customers were scared away by repeated raids).

“Using the now familiar pattern and ruse of ABC authority, these raids have been without warrant and without probable cause, under the pretext of finding liquor violations,” attorney Mark Webb wrote in a claim against the city, describing the harassment of Caliente owner Maurice Salinas and later adding, “Despite numerous raids, the invading officers [Bertrand and Ott] managed to ‘uncover’ a single infraction: one customer used his brother’s ID card, claiming he was over 21 to gain entry. For this reason, Mr. Salinas was cited and fined, bullied, intimidated, and yelled at on the spot.”

Webb said such behavior isn’t legitimate police work, but unlawful harassment. In fact, this experienced litigator said it’s far closer to the shakedowns and extortion rackets familiar to him from the start of his legal career in the late 1970s prosecuting organized crime cases in New York City.

That’s why he’s threatening to bring a novel lawsuit against the city and ABC under federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organization (RICO) Act, a law designed go after the mob, but which has since been adapted to target entities ranging from the tobacco industry to the Los Angeles Police Department.

Webb told us that interference with legitimate business operations, such as running a nightclub, is the essence of RICO suits. As part of the case, Webb plans to submit a surveillance video that shows Bertrand kneeling on the neck of bartender Javier Magallon from The Room and twisting his arm. Webb gave us a copy of the video.

Another element of making a RICO case is the use of intimidation and retaliation against those who complain — which was central to a March 17 SF Weekly story about promoter Arash Ghanadan being inappropriately singled out for arrest by Bertrand as retaliation for filing a complaint against the officer with the Office of Citizen Complaints.

Webb says he has a strong case that he intends to file soon, but that most of his clients just want the SFPD to rein in Bertrand and stop facilitating ABC actions. “I want to have a sit-down with Gavin Newsom,” Webb said. “I am calling on Mayor Newsom to come in and mediate what would be an expensive, divisive fight that will generate national interest … I think this thing can go way quickly without litigation.”

Newsom press secretary Tony Winnicker, who said Newsom has brought concerns about Bertrand to the chief’s attention, didn’t immediately embrace Webb’s offer. “The mayor would rather leave it to the chief,” Winnicker said.

So the question for Gascón is whether he’s willing to take on the cowboy cops within the SFPD’s ranks. After all, Bertrand is also on the San Francisco Police Officers Association Board of Directors.

The nightlife community is organized like never before and plotting its next move in fighting a war it didn’t initiate and barely understands. Whether that war continues now seems to be a question for the party crashers and their supervisors.

End the nightlife crackdown

David Talbot

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March 23, 2010

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Harassing parties and clubs shouldn’t be a priority for a cash-strapped city’s police department

EDITORIAL Police Chief George Gascón has asked for more authority to crack down on rogue cops, and has vowed to clean up the small handful of bad actors who are giving the department an ugly reputation for violence and abuse. But before San Franciscans are going to trust the chief, he’s got to show some evidence that he’s serious — and cleaning up the mess that is Southern Station’s crackdown on nightlife would be a great place to start.

As Rebecca Bowe and Steven T. Jones report in this issue, the SFPD seems to be waging war on parties, clubs, and events, particularly in the SoMa area. And it’s not pretty. Undercover cops sneak into events then call in the troops, who make multiple dubious arrests and, according to widespread accounts, seize or destroy laptops and other DJ equipment and beat up and abuse participants.

It’s a pointless waste of law enforcement resources. In a city where a significant number of murders remain unsolved, where merchants complain about street-level crimes that could easily be addressed by foot patrols, and where the chief complains that he lacks the funds to address all the problems he’s facing, we can’t fathom why stopping nightlife is a top police priority. At the very worst, some participants and promoters might be guilty of holding an event without the proper permits — but nobody’s getting robbed, assaulted, or killed.

And the tactics used by the officers are needlessly violent, sometimes brutal. According to lawsuits and eyewitness accounts, SFPD officers have smashed laptops, kicked and beaten partygoers, and arrested people with little cause. A San Francisco lawyer is preparing to file a RICO Act lawsuit against the city, charging that the police are conspiring with state liquor-control officials to harass people engaged in lawful activity.

The policy directives behind this appear to come from Cdr. James Dudley, the former captain of Southern Station, and the officer most directly responsible for the crackdown is Larry Bertrand. Paired with an officer from the state Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control, Bertrand attends parties in plain clothes, sometimes dressed as a raver.

Complaints about Bertrand and the crackdowns are piling up. We’ve been writing about it for months. SF Weekly picked up the story last week. There are complaints filed with the city’s Office of Citizen Complaints and lawsuits pending. The chief may not have known about the problems at the crime lab, but he has to be aware of what Bertrand is up to.

Gascón should direct Dudley and Bertrand to back off — to halt the undercover work, end the seizure of personal property such as laptops and DJ gear (it’s not a crime to own a computer or speaker system), and work with the clubs and the nightlife community to devise reasonable systems for dealing with permit issues. And he needs to do it publicly, to let San Franciscans know that he’s addressing the issue.

Mayor Gavin Newsom needs to get involved too, and make a clear public statement that harassing parties and clubs isn’t the top priority for a cash-strapped city’s police department.

Editor’s Notes

David Talbot

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March 23, 2010

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Tredmond@sfbg.com

In 2003, after the United States invaded Iraq, a San Francisco Chronicle technology columnist named Henry Norr got fired for participating in an antiwar demonstration. Marching against the war, the Chron’s managers decided, was a conflict of interest. Although Norr didn’t write about politics, or international affairs, or anything other than computers, he was sent packing.

A year later, Chronicle reporter Rachel Gordon was barred from covering the biggest story in town — Mayor Gavin Newsom’s decision to allow same-sex marriages — because she’d married her same-sex partner. Again the paper’s editors went up on their big high horses and pronounced her conflicted.

So how come it’s fine for columnist and former mayor Willie Brown — who writes about politics all the time — to work as a flak for Pacific Gas and Electric Co.?

Brown was on hand to represent PG&E March 17 at a California Public Utilities Commission hearing on Proposition 16, a statewide ballot measure aimed at blocking public power. He sat with the PG&E executives and said in public that he was there on PG&E’s behalf. PG&E has been a client of his private law firm, and he acknowledged that the company "sought my counsel" over the past few years.

Sounds like a lot more obvious conflict than anything Norr or Gordon did.

But guess what? The Chron has a different standard for celebrity former mayors who carry water for corrupt utilities. When we asked Chronicle editor Ward Bushee about Brown’s obvious conflict, here’s what he said: "Willie Brown writes a popular weekly column for the Chronicle, and readers frequently tell us that they look forward to reading his informed insights and entertaining opinions on issues ranging from politics to movies.

"Our readers like his column to a large degree because he’s the Willie Brown with a long and colorful political history and many connections," he continued. "Willie is not an employee or a member of the Chronicle staff but his columns go through standard editing procedures. He understands conflict of interest as well as anyone. I’m confident that he would not use his column to promote or benefit outside interests or clients. But if you feel differently, why don’t you contact him and ask him these questions directly."

Um, actually, Mr. Bushee, you need a history lesson. Brown was notorious for using his position as speaker of the state Assembly to promote the interests of his private law clients — something that could have gotten him disbarred in 47 states (but not this one). So he has a long history of "promoting … outside interests or clients."

And I did try to contact him. The first time I called, he answered his phone but said he was too busy to talk. I’ve left messages since then, and he hasn’t called back.

For the record, I enjoy Brown’s column too. And for the record, I have no problem with a journalist taking stands on issues. I speak about issues all the time — on panels, on the radio, at community events … anytime anyone’s willing to listen, I’ll tell you what I think. Which is pretty much what you read right here.

But I never get paid for advocating for anyone, certainly not PG&E. And I don’t like double standards.

Frankly, Bushee is wrong here. If Willie Brown can show up as PG&E’s spokesperson at a public hearing on a major political issue and still cover San Francisco and California politics as a columnist (without, by the way, ever disclosing in his column that a major player in the political world is a private client of his), then the Chron should give Henry Norr his job back. And Rachel Gordon should be able to write about the politics of same-sex marriage. Because this looks really, really bad.

End the nightlife crackdown

David Talbot

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March 23, 2010

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